Prince Charles Makes Secret Visit to Grandmother’s Grave in East Jerusalem
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Charles, Prince of Wales, visited in secret the grave of his grandmother on the Mount of Olives in eastern Jerusalem.
The prince was in Israel on Friday for the funeral of Shimon Peres. Charles’ paternal grandmother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, is interred in the Church of Mary Magdalene on the Mount of Olives. She died in 1969 in London and was transferred to a crypt in the church in 1988 in accordance with her wishes.
Charles visited the grave later on Friday. No media was present, but some photos were later posted on social media, Haaretz reported.
Princess Alice, also known as Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark, is the mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the husband of Queen Elizabeth. During World War II, Alice lived in Athens, which was occupied by the Nazis in 1943. She is recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations for hiding a Greek Jewish family from the Nazis until the end of the Holocaust.
In general, the British royal family refrains from official visits to Israel except for state funerals; it does not recognize eastern Jerusalem as part of Israel.
The few royal visits to Israel have been defined as private. Prince Philip visited Israel in 1994 for a ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial to honor his mother. Prior to the ceremony, Philip and his sister, Princess Sophie, visited their mother’s coffin.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
